Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
A Southern District Court jury in Houston awarded $138 million to Carlo Civelli, who claimed Philippe Mulacek owed him money he loaned to him and broke agreements they made. The pair had worked together in a company, InterOil, which invested in properties in Papua New Guinea for potential oil and gas.
“It’s been a long and hard-fought battle to get to this point,” said Munsch Hardt’s Richard Schwartz, who represents Carlo Civelli.
A $16.4 billion merger that would create the nation’s largest provider of wholesale electricity cleared its final hurdle Friday with an announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that Constellation Energy and Houston-based Calpine Energy had agreed to resolve antitrust concerns with the divestment of six power plants based in the Northeast and Texas.
Zechariah Yi is the fourth person to plead guilty in a bribery scheme that involved United States Postal Service contracts that awarded about a total of $15 million to three trucking companies. Yi’s sentencing is set for March 2026.
The deal includes a potential $250 million post-closing earnout for PurgeRite, which provides cooling and filtration services vital to data centers, as well as medical and research facilities and precision manufacturing plants.
The Texas Lawbook will announce next week the finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards, including Achievement in Pro Bono and Public Service and Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion. In addition, the Texas Lawbook Foundation is seeking interests for its board of directors. More details in this week’s column, plus, we have two firms — Vinson & Elkins and the Witherite Law Group — and a group of lawyer volunteers led by Michael Hurst that are spreading the holiday spirit early, and TODAY ONLY we have an extraordinary opportunity to help Texas Appleseed achieve some of its amazing public service work.
Toyota allegedly sold driver data to Progressive Insurance and other third parties, a class action claims. In a Tuesday order, Chief Judge Amos Mazzant ordered a stay pending arbitration in the case.
As the general counsel and chief legal officer of the Texas A&M University System, Bonilla oversaw legal matters for eleven universities. He will focus his practice on representing educational institutions.
When I was a teenager, my grandmother told me that her grandmother, “Nana,” marched for women’s suffrage.
What impressed my grandmother was not just that Nana walked the streets with throngs of other women clamoring for voting rights; it was that she did so despite being a woman who personally had little to gain from equal suffrage.
Nana was a married, middle-aged mother who, as my grandmother put it, “wore black chiffon at night.” In other words, she was a woman of means. As such, Nana benefited from the status quo. Practically speaking, she had reason to resist change. Still, she believed women should have the right to vote. So, she marched.
She also wrote.
Farm and construction equipment manufacturer Bobcat claims competitor Caterpillar is infringing on five of its patents, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Texas. The company has also filed actions against Caterpillar in the U.S. International Trade Commission, German court, and the Unified Patent Court of the European Union.
The economic loss rule provides a limitation on damages in cases alleging both breach of contract and certain other causes of action sounding in tort, by precluding a party’s recovery of damages when the only economic loss is the subject matter of the contract. In operation, the rule “restricts contracting parties to contractual remedies for those economic losses associated with the relationship, even when the breach might reasonably be viewed as a consequence of a contracting party’s negligence.” This article explores this rule and when it applies — as well as the exceptions to it.
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